Thursday, August 28, 2008

ITEM! Today of course, is the day that should be recognized as a national holiday for comic book fans around the world — it's Jack Kirby's birthday! On August 28, 1917, Jacob Benjamin Kurtzberg, later known as Jack Kirby, was born in New York’s Lower East Side. Little did anyone know that 91 years ago today the single greatest creative force ever seen in the sequential art medium had just arrived on the planet. There have been many masters of the comic arts, but there’s only been one King.

We talk a lot about Jack Kirby here in Soapboxland. Heck, one of the reasons your Uncle Stanley started this off-the-record and under-the-radar blog was so that I could set a few records straight and give some credit where credit was long overdue. So to celebrate the King’s birthday, we proudly present a sense-shattering selection of the best of our Jolly Jack Kirby blog posts. Learn what brand of cigar the King smoked! Hear Jolly Jack tell it like it is in his own words! Learn the secret true origins of characters like Galactus and the Inhumans! Read along as we celebrate the King’s birthday the only way we know how — with lots and lots of agonizingly alliterative adjectives, adverbs, and anagrams!

Wednesday, August 27, 2008

ITEM! Here’s a bit of Interweb Trivia to confuse and confound your CPU (that’s Cerebral Processing Center in this case, natch). What’s the great-grand-daddy of comic book blogs, alongside which all others pale by comparison? Who’s the reigning authority on all matters Gold, Silver, and Bronze Age related? What conversant comics blog will soon be celebrating une centential de la cinq? If you guessed Yours Truly, then you get points for being a loyal Marvelite, but sorry, no soap... er, soapbox!

Conject and comment away, Inquisitive Ones... or just be right here on Labor Day (September 1st, for those living outside the U.S.) when we help celebrate this momentous monumental milestone by featuring some special soap-bloggage about the man behind the graphic displayed above, and the blog that loves him like a calligraphic cognate! Get your broadband bills all paid up blogsters, 'cause you're not gonna want to miss this one!

Tuesday, August 26, 2008

ITEM! One of the toughest things about working with Jack "King" Kirby was just trying to keep up with and sort through all of his idiosyncratic ideas. Jack was the kind of creator who threw away more ideas before breakfast than most of us had all year. And I’ll be the first to admit that when parsing through the 10 gazillion ideas he’d pack into those pencilled pages’ margin notes, a few times I went. “well, gee, that’s great... but it’s just too crazy. THAT’S never gonna happen.”

But I’ve noticed that the present has a habit of catching up to Jack’s future-perfect ideas. To wit, Apple’s ubiquitous iPhone. Just recently, at least two comapnies have announced or deployed comic book reading applications for Steve’ Job’s wunderdevice. A company named Clickwheel developed something called the Clickwheel Comic Reader that lets you read specially-formatted comics right on your iPhone. For example, you can subscribe to Great Britain’s titanic 2000 A.D. and Judge Dredd for a nominal fee, or catch tons of other comic creations for absolutely free!

Then there’s iVerse’s recently announced iVerse Media Player, which will do basically the same thing when released. And iVerse is actively seeking content partners even as we blog. What a great way for independent comic book creators to distribute their wares, as well as the big boys. I can tell you that your Uncle Stanley will be right on top of this with my own daringly Disney digital comic series, Time Jumper! As the late-great Walt Kelly said, “We have met the future, and it is us.” And as always, Jolly Jack was waiting for us there all along. While your iPhone can’t yet summon a Boom Tube up for yah (Hear that, Jobs? Get to work!), but you can read comics on it for Odin’s sake! How cool is that? To keep up on the latest and greatest comic reading applications for your iPhone or iPod Touch, go to the iPhone Comic Book website. Tell ‘em Stan the Man sent yah!

It’s probably just as well. As you may recall, Virgin mogul Richard Branson and the Smilin’ One announced that Yours Truly would create an exciting new superhero universe for their comics line at Comic-Con New York this past year. With the perilous plethora of projects that I’ve had on my plate lately, the only idea I’d come up with so far was a superhero group called The Litigation Men. Litigation Men was about a team of attorneys that were belted with cosmic rays and all got super powers. Their leader was a guy named Mister Mitigation. Other members included his girl-friend the Indivisible Girl, the Human Tort, and the Juror. Based in Hollywood, they had adventures signing multi-million dollar licensing deals with big up-front payments that eventually crash and burn. Ah well... maybe these legal-eagle characters will still see the light of publishing day as characters under one of my development deals with Disney! There's a company that knows a thing or two about the legal process!

Monday, August 25, 2008

ITEM! Speaking of titanic toupees and remembrances of rugs-gone-by, here’s one that I’d completely forgotten about (I know... whatta shocker)... The Adventures of Stan Lee’s Toupee. In a break with the FOX Network’s usual policy of only cancelling really good shows, The Adventures of Stan Lee’s Toupee got cancelled faster than Kevin Smith’s Clerks cartoon. I think that they probably burned all the tapes afterwards in the FOX backlot as some kind of offering to Mephisto. Still, it was fun while it lasted, and we had some great guest stars like William “The Shat” Shatner. You Frantic Ones can read all about it here. It’s listed on the Wikipedia clone Uncyclopedia... and as we all know, if it’s on the Intrawebs, it must be true!

Saturday, August 23, 2008

ITEM! Memory is a funny thing, pilgrims. Some days I can remember exactly what I had for lunch at the Seawane Club with Jolly Jack in 1966 (hot open brisket and salad, natch), and other days I don’t even remember to match my socks. To compensate for my famously poor powers of recollection, I often make up stories that I’ve repeated so many times that I even believe that they’re true. Sometimes, they even still contain an itty-bitty grain of unremembered truth!

And so it is with this vaunted video where no less than William Shatner interviews me about the origins of Spider-Man. Since we all know (including me on a good day) that the original idea for Spidey came to me second-hand via Jack Kirby from an old Joe Simon creation (which the two of them had already retooled once into the Archie Comics character, The Fly), it’s telling that my standard pre-fabricated “I don’t really remember” story still contains a reference to me “seeing a fly on the wall” as an explanation for where the idea for Spider-man came from. Don’t believe me? See the video Honest Irv has embedded below. This is (to the best of my reckless recollection) done for Charles Band's Cinemaker series over on the Full Moon Channel. You know, it probably wouldn’t be a bad idea for me to focus on just trying to remember to take my daily dose St. Johns Wort BEFORE I do these kind of interviews! Yeesh!

Friday, August 22, 2008

ITEM! Wowsir! Can you believe it’s already Friday? And that means it’s time for another installment of the Marvel Remasterworks version of Fantastic Four #3 (March, 1962). The premise is this: if Marvel can pay new artists to redraw select panels, pages, and complete issues of classic Lee-Kirby and Lee-Ditko comics for their Marvel Masterworks reprint series, then why shouldn’t Yours Truly be able to re-dialogue ‘em as well? So, until some lawyer letters show up from somebody I haven’t already beaten the pants off of in court twice now, here’s the latest chapter! See Part One or Part Two to catch up on our story so far, or just navigate back to the beginning after you click on the page below! Where else besides Stan's Soapbox are you gonna get all this comic goodness for free on the Intrawebs, pilgrims? Not from Dan Didio or Brand Echh, that’s for sure! And the madness that is Marvel marches on...

Thursday, August 21, 2008

ITEM! Here’s a biographical blast from the past... an original rough draft of one of my swingin’ Shakespearean soliloquies (otherwise known as Stan’s Soapbox) complete with hand-edits and a note to Archie Goodwin from John Verpoorten saying what our favorite production manager was always saying — hurry the heck up! Just for kicks, click here to see the published version for comparison (from comics published in Dec. 1976, natch), and as a special added bonus, see a magazine print ad that went hand-in-claw with the TV commercial (see below) that I’m yammering about at length in this particular Soapbox! Who could ask for anything more?

Before I forget, thanks to MMMS member-in-good-standing Richard Bensam for sending this into the ol’ Sock It To Stan email box, to Titanic Tom Spurgeon for running this story about it, and finally to former Marvel assistant editor Sparkling Scott Edelman for fishing this priceless artifact out of the Bullpen trash can and saving it all these years. Did yah see that? I just gave full credit to all parties involved! Who says this isn’t the Marvel Age of Old Dogs Learning New Tricks?

ITEM! And a Howlin' Happy Birthday to Marvelous Marie Severin, she of the twinkling eyes and mischievous sense of humor! Your Uncle Stanley is a gentleman, so I am not going to mention just how old Merry Marie is, but let’s just say that’s she’s younger than Yours Truly. ‘Course so is John McCain. But be that as it may, you don’t come across many folks as wonderful as John’s little sis Marie, and we here in Soapboxland wish her the very best on her birthday. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again — calling Marie the best woman artist in the business is an injustice. Marie was one of the best artists in the business, period. I’d call yah up and sing “Happy Birthday” to yah, Marie, but we don’t want the neighbors calling 911 thinking you’re strangling a cat! Here's a sizzling selection of some of Marie's best cover art, along with a winning one right here to get yah started! Enjoy!

Wednesday, August 20, 2008

ITEM! Folks are always asking me what my favorite cameo appearance has been in our Mighty Marvel Movies, and I have to be honest with you... the answer is none of them. Don’t get me wrong. I love every one of my Marvel movie cameos, from seaside hot dog vendor (X-Men 2000) to wedding crasher (FF 2: Rise of the Silver Surfer 2007) to Hugh Hefner impersonator (Iron Man 2008). But my all-time favorite movie cameo wasn’t in a Marvel flick at all — it was my appearance as myself in my buddy Kevin Smith’s 1995 cult classic, Mallrats. If you haven’t seen this classic exploration of the mating rituals of our mall-dwelling youth, then shame on you, pilgrim! Let me tempt you into getting this baby on DVD by showin’ yah the best three minutes of the whole magilla.

ITEM! And speaking of musicals, wouldn't the Merry Marvel Bullpen of the 60s make a great cast of crooning comic characters for stage or screen? If only Yours Truly had the time to write every great idea that flowed from my Gershwin-like ganglia! Maybe if I get the ball rolling, other talents approaching mine (admittedly, few though they may be in number) can pick up the call and run with it. Here's a little ditty I wrote about our favorite Sicilian Scribbler, the late-great Vince Colletta. The lyrics should be sung to the tune of "The Oldest Established" from Guys & Dolls. Enjoy!

ITEM! Relax, Frantic Ones. Even though Broadway is indeed busy moving Heaven and Earth to try and make a musical out of everything from Spider-Man to Robocop, no one has yet decided to make a musical out of Sturdy Steve Ditko’s hero Mr. A. It’s just that every once in awhile my adopted great-grandson Irving Forbush III brings me these things and in spite all common sense and common-copyright-law I just have to post ‘em. This one takes the lyrics from a song by Alan Moore’s old band The Ice Cream Emperors and lets everyone’s favorite rascally Randian hero cut loose and belt one out! The results are, well... you better just take a gander at it for yourselves... (and as always, click on the image to embiggen it, natch!)

Sunday, August 17, 2008

ITEM! Quick trivia quiz, True Believers: who was your Uncle Stanley’s very first comic character creation? Go on — you probably peeked already anyway. That’s right — it’s The Mighty Destroyer! Check out the amazing Jack Kirby cover from Mystic Comics #7 (December 1941) that featured the character’s second appearance. Who was The Destroyer? Ah, how quickly they forget. Well Sherman, set your Wayback Machine for those momentous months just before the U.S. joined World War II and just after Timely Comics editor Joe Simon and art director Jack Kirby had given the world everyone’s favorite shield-slinger, Captain America. A young office assistant and nephew-in-law to the publisher named Stanley Lieber was working his way up the Timely office ranks from lunchtime gopher and sometime flutist to actual comic book writer. Shortly after I had my very first peerless prose piece published in Captain America #3 (May 1941, natch), Yours Truly got the chance to create a new superhero for the Mystic Comics anthology series.

Who was The Mighty Destroyer? Well for starters, he was completely different from Captain America. American journalist Ken Marlowe got his dose of the super-soldier serum behind enemy lines while in a German concentration camp. See the difference? The Army didn't need to send The Destroyer into WWII, ‘cause he was already there fighting the Germans right in the heart of the Fatherland. See? Completely different. And instead of the good old “red, white and blue” of Cap’s costume, the Destroyer’s costume used a head-spinning skull and red-and-black stripes motif. How does a young, shy, and innocent 19-year-old design a completely original costumed crusader from whole cloth, you ask? See my original character sketch from 1941 (shown above) to get some idea. I was, after all, learning at the feet of the Simon-Kirby team. And getting them bagels.

Old Desty didn’t last too long after WW II ended, though later Marvel writers have brought the character back with varying levels of success. Though mostly forgotten today, a superhero in a full face mask who fights a fascist government commando style right on their own doorstep looks and sounds a little familiar doesn’t it? Maybe Alan Moore saw a few old British reprints of Mystic Comics as a child? “D for Destroyer” anyone? So, until next week’s “Forgotten Hero Corner,” this is the Mighty Smilin' One saying, keep ‘em flying, Forbushman!

Friday, August 15, 2008

ITEM! That’s right, heroes! It’s Marvel Remasterworks Friday, and you know what that means! It means it’s time for Chapter Two of the re-dialogued Lee-Kirby classic, Fantastic Four #3 (March, 1962). If you’re new too these, then here’s the skinny: since Marvel got caught having new artists redraw some panels, pages and whole issues of Silver Age classics for their Marvel Masterworks reprint books, your Uncle Stanley thought if you’re gonna redraw ‘em, why not let me take a crack at re-dialoguing them? If yah missed out on Chapter One, just go here, or navigate back from the linked page below. And so, without further ardent ado — click on the image below to get on with the show!

Thursday, August 14, 2008

ITEM! ... but that doesn’t usually stop me from saying it anyway! Coming this November to a quality cultural venue near you — Stan’s Soapbox! This 144-page prestigious paperback production will include (among other goodies) every single Stan’s Soapbox written from 1967 to 1980, just as it originally appeared in our Batty Bullpen Bulletins. And best of all, this titanic tome is being published by the Hero Initiative, and if you don’t already know what a worthy cause that one is, then it’s time to turn in your Spidey Underoos! Or you could just go here and educate yourself, oh bewildered one. Get your orders in fast for this one, pilgrims... it may sell out early on it’s way to the New York Times Bestseller List. Heck, why order just one? Get a Brubaker’s Dozen so you can hand ‘em out as Christmas presents this year. Attention all English Lit professors: educational discounts may be available should you wish to include this soon-to-be literary classic into your curriculum!

And before someone asks, no word yet on the sequel entitled Son of Stan’s Soapbox (either that or Bring On The Blogs... I haven't decided yet), but we’ll keep yah informed as further developments arise!

ITEM! A giant No-Holds-Barred, No-Kidding-Around, Nebulous No-Prize goes out to Our Gal Val (she of the Occasional Superheroine fame) for this little slice of journalistic op-ed. Valorous Val reports on a interview with my bestest biddy buddy in the whole wide world, Robert Downey Jr., who is, shall we say, somewhat bewildered and underwhelmed by all the hoopla surrounding The Dark Knight. Go read it here. In fact, he was moved to express himself in a way that your Uncle Stanley doesn’t normally avail himself to in public. I usually resort to a smile and my six-volume thesaurus before getting too sassy. But still, RD Jr. makes some good points that Val expounds upon with insight and intelligence. So Valerie D’Orazio, for meritorious service to Merry Marveldom above-and-beyond the call of duty, consider yourself No-Prized and hereby field-promoted to the rollicking rank of Fearless Front Facer! Your comic-reading country thanks you!

Wednesday, August 13, 2008

J.S. "Elliot" here subbing for the Smilin’ One today. And it seems that it’s that time of the month once again. Amid the near-constant onslaught of ancillary tie-ins, one-shots, and special issues surrounding Marvel’s summer crossover event, Secret Invasion, comes an actual issue of the Mother-of-all-Skrull books. And I have to say... finally... in Secret Invasion #5 we get some actual plot development. It's almost as if Brian Michael Bendis has been listening to the reader feedback. I'm sure if you, me, or Newsarama asked, he’d maintain that he's had this all planned out in advance since second grade in 1974. Either way, things actually start to pick up nicely in this issue.

*SPOILER ALERT* For example, after being introduced so dramatically to the story last issue as he rode to the rescue of a group of heroes fighting off the Skrulls in New York, Nick Fury finally gets down to real business this issue and... wait for it... watches some cable TV. No, I’m not kidding you. But that dramatic development aside, some real shape-changing waste matter finally hits the air redistribution system. S.W.O.R.D. director Abigail Brand single-handedly flushes an entire ship-full of Skrulls out the airlock and rescues Reed Richards. Jarvis the Gentlesman’s Gentleskrull get’s his metamorphic backside handed to him by SHIELD. It takes Reed Richards all of about five seconds to sort out the four-issue mess that’s been taking place in the Savage Land. And Hawkeye gets a real mad on. Like I said, for the most part very nicely done. This is how a summer crossover event is supposed to read. According to my calculations, by Secret Invasion #5 we’re finally about up to about the same point that I was by page 10 of issue #2 of Secret Wars, but that’s decompressed storytelling for you. If Mr. Bendis can keep amping up the pace as he did in this issue, at least this series will make a wonderful 60 minute read later on when it’s released as a trade paperback. And who knows? Maybe that was the Secret Invasion plan all along...

Tuesday, August 12, 2008

ITEM! Hey there, anime and manga fans! You know, your Uncle Stanley will try anything once. As you may remember from a previous blogisode, at Comic Con New York this year Hiroyuki Takei (he of international Shaman King fame) and Yours Truly (he of the humble wit and smilin’ mug) announced our magnificent manga collaboration Ultimo. What you may not know is that I decided this was the perfect time to try and honor my Japanese collaborator by trying out a pair of those anime contact lenses you can get from the G&G Company in Korea.

Granted the overall effect was somewhat muted by my official patent-pending prescription sunglasses, but still, it’s the thought that counts, right? Not so much as it turns out. Hiroyuki was polite enough about my portentous purple peepers in public, but he kept giving me that sideways crazy old man look when he thought I wasn’t looking — which wasn’t often with those things floating in front of my cataracts! Guess it was a good thing the contracts were already signed. Anyhoo — should you want to get yourself some Speed Racer eyes, go here and tell ‘em the Smilin’ One sent yah! Enjoy!

Monday, August 11, 2008

ITEM! While we’re on the subject of forgotten heroes, Alrugo Entertainment has just released the latest clip from the forlorn and forgotten first Marvel movie, Italian Spiderman (Italian with English subtitles, 1968). This "liberal," shall we say, interpretation of everyone’s favorite web-spinner was one of the worst and last licensing deals my former boss and late-lamented uncle-in-law Martin Goodman signed before selling Marvel Comics to Cadence Industries. Italian Spiderman was a movie so agonizingly, mind-boggling, soul-numbingly awful that it was never released upon its completion in 1968. When the Italian studio that made it went belly-up, the sole surviving print of the movie was shipped across the Atlantic by creditors for possible distribution in the U.S. Unfortunately for them, the cargo freighter sank before making port, taking this unknown classic with it.

Fast forward to 2007 when a salvage crew recovered some of the cargo from the sunken ship and up came Italian Spiderman, still hermetically sealed in its cobwebbed steel film canisters. Meantime Alrugo Entertainment had been resurrected based on the nostalgia renaissance occurring around their other 60s films Busto Busto and Sex Cops II. Alrugo then decided to unleash Italian Spiderman on an unsuspecting world a few clips at a time on the Intrawebs. The rest, as they say, is history.

The latest episode is a loose adaptation of The Amazing Spider-Man #6 (Nov. 1963). And by loose adaptation I mean there are episodes of Wally Gator that are closer than this thing, but what the hey! Honest Irv has embedded it below for your retro-60s foreign film fest enjoyment! You can catch up on the whole magilla at the Alrugo Films website or over at their YouToobs page. Who says this isn’t the Marvel Age of Italian Spandex and Epilepsy-Inducing Flash Cuts?

ITEM! Time to answer some of the ol’ Sock It To Stan emailage, and to kick off a new ongoing series (which means I’ll do it again as often as my daily dosage of St. John’s Wort jogs my intermittent memory functions)! It all starts with this request which comes from Jazzy Joe Wagner:

"As a former No Prize Recipient and a frequent reader that loves the site, could you do an article on the long lost Solarman comic series and animated pilot that was produced back in the 1980's? It appears that Marvel had big plans for the Stan Lee penned series and I would love to get some insight (and potential video links) about the character and the reason it was pushed to animation so quickly.

Thanks,

Joe Wagner"

Why was I hearing Ride of the Valkyries in my head while reading your letter, Joe? God, I love the smell of comics first thing in the morning... it smells like allegory! But I digress. Your Uncle Stanley could write a copious cannon in C Major about the long-lost Solarman project from 1989-90, but why do all that work when someone else has already covered the Solared One’s brief two-issue/aborted cartoon pilot/abandoned toy line career in such masterly detail? Get thee over to this article by Darlin’ Danny Best at his own cultural comic conclave otherwise known as the 20th Century Danny Boy blog! Normally I would just lift and rewrite the main elements of his piece into a new article that I could claim complete creative credit for, but I’ve been trying to mend my scene-stealin’ ways here lately! Enjoy!

Next time at Forgotten Hero Corner: one of my very first comic creations ever, Captain Amer—er, I mean, The Mighty Destroyer!

Thursday, August 7, 2008

ITEM! As much as Yours Truly has read and relished John “There’s Always To” Morrow’s Jack Kirby Collector, there was always a special, warm place in my heart for Great Britain’s late-lamented Jack Kirby Quarterly... which, let’s be honest, was anything BUT quarterly back when it was still being published. Still, the JKQ was always a nice companion mag to Jack Kirby Collector, which has often emphasized large-scale reproduction of classic Kirby pencils and art over scholarly analysis. Not so with the JKQ. As is often the case, the Europeans tend to look deeper into our own art forms than do the Americans who invented them. That’s what your Uncle Stanley always loved about sitting down and cozying up with a fresh copy of the JKQ.

Well guess what, pilgrims? After a lapse in publication of nearly three years, the Jack Kirby Quarterly is coming back, bigger and bolder than ever! Thanks in large part to the efforts of Credible Chrissie Harper and a host of other Khd’s (Professors of Kirbyology) from both sides of the ocean, issue #15 of the JKQ will be released for mail order later this month, and should show up in Continental Comic Shops shortly thereafter! See this sizzling summation of the 68-pages of content, along with ordering info, over at the Jack Kirby Weblog. Go get this one, sunshine! The King would want yah to!

Wednesday, August 6, 2008

ITEM! Don’tcha just love it when the good guys win one every once in awhile? It was just back this past November when the bone-headed brainiacs at Marvel Management yanked GIT Corps’ license to keep producing their dazzling and delightful DVD collections featuring 40+ years of Marvel’s best and brightest — all scanned from original issues I might add, unlike a certain series of Masterworks reprints that I could mention...

Featuring every single Star Trek comic ever published (with the exception of the current Trek comic licensees, IDW), this collection spans the Gold Key comics of the 60s, through the entire Marvel Comics comics (featuring some awesome art by the late-great Dave Cockrum), all the way to the recent Wildstorm books! Holy Skrull-cow! That’s everything from Captain Kirk to Captain Janeway. That’s more Klingons, Romulans and Tribbles than you can shake a dilithium crystal at! That’s light-years of reading all for the low-low-low price of $49.99 (or 5 slips of gold-pressed latinum, for those societies without legal tender).

This titanic Trek tribute will be released this September, though I expect my gratis review copy to show up well before then. Didja hear that GIT Corp? Gratis Review copy? The Smilin’ One’s not rich, yah know. Well, actually I am, but I’ll still take a free copy anyway! Your commanding officer will thank you!

Tuesday, August 5, 2008

ITEM! Hi there, Heroes! Time for another clandestine clue concerning the mysterious Marvel ReMasterworks logo featured in yesterday’s blog! Get out your magnifying glasses, deerstalker caps and seven-percent solutions to solve this mystery, pilgrim. Your next clue? Submitted for your approval: a frame from a classic Lee-Kirby issue of the Fantastic Four, scanned with loving care from an original printing. Notice anything odd about it? It’s elementary, dear reader! What in the name of Galactus' lobster bib does it all mean, you ask? Keep those guesses coming, noble No-Prize seekers!

ITEM! Wouldja believe that even with the boffo box office performance of Iron Man and The Incredible Hulk, not to mention a Q2 earnings report showing a quantum leap from $101.5 million in 2007 to $156.9 million in 2008, that Marvel stock dropped on the NYSE by over 8% this morning? Ouch! That’s even going to hit Yours Truly right in my Aunt May pocketbook! What’s all the Wall Street fuss about? Are the bears and bulls fighting again? Or is it the Hulk and Wolverine?

Nope — turns out the problem is with the goose that lays the golden eggs, which is to say the publishing division. You know... the part of the company that actually creates the intellectual properties that in turn feed the rest of Marvel’s monolithic merchandising machine... the part your Uncle Stan used to run. While earnings were way up for Marvel’s in-house Film Production and Licensing divisions, the Publishing division was down over the same quarter a year ago for the second quarter in a row. Get all the gory details here.

So while the publishing goose may not be dead yet, he’s certainly feeling a little under the weather. And the comic shops and dealers that depend on direct sales of floppies (comic books) as much as droppies (trade paperbacks and hardback reprints that hurt if you drop them on your foot) are feeling the sales-pinch as well. Secret Invasion sales were expected to push the publishing division to “traditional margins for the full year 2008.” Those Skrulls better get pushing before the publishing division is pushing up Skrull-daisies. My retirement fund, should I ever actually do that sort of thing, is at stake! Yeesh! If yah ever need my help, Joe, all yah gotta do is call!

Monday, August 4, 2008

ITEM! You may have read some of the raucous rumblings regarding Marvel’s recent re-rendering of classic Kirby, Ditko, Colan and other Silver Age art for their various Marvel Masterworks reprints. If not, go see this studious summation over at 20th Century Danny Boy. What does any of that have to do with the price of trees in China? Well, we’re not quite ready to tell yah yet, Tiger! But your Uncle Stanley will tantalize and tease you with the logo for the next peerless pronouncement to grace this blog just about any day now. A specially-framed Forbush-approved No-Prize to the first clever commenter who correctly conjectures just what this creative caption shown below might conceal...

ITEM! Time to make an unbelievably unabashed plug for the Jack Kirby Museum, the Intraweb’s virtual online source for... well, in this case.... The Source! Wouldja believe that in all my 85 years your Uncle Stanley has never seen all of King Kirby’s New Gods character designs all at one time and in full, rich, living color? Until now, that is. Randy Rand Hoppe and the crew at The Kirby Museum (with a little help it seems from Chrissie Harper) have posted full-color scans of both sets of drawings: Jack’s New Gods designs (including a few that never made into his Unfinished Fourth World Symphony... Robot Defender or Black Sphynx anyone?), and another set of the Elder Norse Gods that looks as though he was working up a more adult retooling of Marvel’s classic The Mighty Thor. These drawings all feature fabulous Kirby pencils, Darling Don Heck inks, and Jack's unique polychrome color-sense to boot! Seeing these things reproduced in dodgy black-and-white magazines over the years clearly did not do them justice! I can’t remember what the original Metron piece fetched on ebay when it went up for sale a couple of years ago, but it would’ve been a bargain at twice the price! Click on any of Honest Irv’s Fourth World Thumbnails below to be whisked away by Blog-Boom Tube to the Jack Kirby Museum’s God’s Gallery! Enjoy!

Friday, August 1, 2008

ITEM! You know, I’ve done my very best over the years to make Sturdy Steve Ditko happy... I really have. I’ve done everything from publishing a letter in the New York Times in which I stated plainly and for-the-record that I have always “considered” him the co-creator of Spider-Man, to voluntarily letting myself be grilled by that BBC-boob Jonathan Ross until some of my true feelings about the matter accidentally slipped past my normally glib and glamorous gab-hole (see video below). I’ve even made anonymous donations to anonymous libraries to try and straighten this creative-credit karma out. And what thanks do I get? I get to read blogs like this one by Matt Tauber.

Actually it’s a pretty good read, including a nice analysis of Ditko’s latest Avenging Mind comic/essay. You know, current efforts to properly credit my co-creators and keep my legendary literary legacy nice and shiny aside, your Uncle Stanley will have to redact himself from commenting on things written or said as long ago as 1974’s Origins of Marvel Comics. Was Yours Truly just grabbing any credit that wasn’t nailed down back then, or were Marvel’s entertainment attorneys breathing down my neck to ensure that a current work-for-hire employee was credited with creating everything? Who knows... I sure don’t. I have trouble remembering what I had for lunch yesterday, my-as-less what went on 30-40 years ago. And besides, if an 85-year-old man wants to think he mostly created (or co-created for Odin’s sake) the whole blamed Marvel Universe, why not let him? You’ll note that even after Steve and Jack left Marvel, the Smilin’ One went right on creating new characters. She-Hulk anyone? How ‘bout Stripperella?

ITEM! You’ve been asking for it! Now you're gonna get it! Never let it be said that your good ol’ Uncle Stan heeds not thy noble requests! For those of you not old enough to have enrolled yourselves into the timeless ranks of the Merry Marvel Marching Society (and let’s face it — if you are old enough to have been a member, you’re probably reading this from the safety of a 401k-funded La-Z-Boy Dreamtime Recliner), here at last is another of our bountiful blasts from the past. If you joined the MMMS circa 1967 or so, you received the following floppy vinyl record with your membership kit...

“Scream Along With Marvel” featured the official MMMS theme song as well as the Marvel Super Heroes Show theme — both songs with lyrics written by Yours Truly (as if you couldn’t tell by the arresting alliteration and rapturous rhymes) and performed by the Grantray-Lawrence Animation Singers! And rounding the whole package out was comic cover art by the always amazing Marvelous Marie Severin!

Want a little taste of what it was like to be a Merry Marvelite back in the days of Moon-shots and Asian hot-spots? Just click on Honest Irv’s multimedia thingies below, sit back, and prepare yourself for an audacious auditory adventure! And if you've got some shekels to burn, Mile High Comics even has a couple of these baby-boomer bad-boys for sale! Enjoy!